A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD?

In September 2011, the Kingsbury
Center at Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) and the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute released one of the first longitudinal studies of high-achieving
students entitled Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude? In that study,
authors Xiang, Dahlin, Cronin, Theaker, and Durant (2011) found that most
high-achieving students maintained their status over time, but that a
significant proportion fell from the high-achieving ranks, some far enough to
jeopardize their access to college and merit assistance.

In this follow-up, the academic
growth of 35,000 elementary and middle school students in 31 states, all

of them high achievers within their
own schools, were followed over a three-year period. Of particular interest to
us were the growth and performance of high-achieving students from high-poverty
schools, where “growth” focused on change over time and “performance” focused
on single points of time. As the focus of
accountability has shifted from basic proficiency to college and career
readiness, we wondered whether high-poverty schools’ students were “on track”
to meet this higher standard by the end of high school. To study this, we
compared a sample of NWEA schools’ achievement scores in elementary and
middle school grades, and their associated probability of being on track to
meet ACT® college
readiness benchmarks at the end of high school.

The study yielded several major
findings and policy implications:

Finding One—While the vast majority
of high achievers were on track to be college ready, significant achievement
gaps existed between students in poor schools and students in wealthy schools.

As expected, high achievers in the
low-poverty middle schools were better prepared than those in high-poverty
schools; 95% of the high achievers attending wealthy schools were on track to
meet ACT college readiness benchmarks, while 85% of high achievers from poor
schools also crossed this threshold. These proportions remained essentially
constant across all three years that they were tracked.

Policy Implication: To close the
achievement gap, high- poverty schools will need to offer their high achievers
accelerated and advanced programs that are standard fare in wealthier schools.
Because many students in high-poverty schools come from families without
college experience, schools may need to move beyond basics to address critical
elements of Conley’s Four Key Dimensions of College Readiness (2007),
particularly the academic behaviors (self-management skills, time management,
persistence) and the contextual skills and awareness (college culture,
affording college, admission procedures and requirements) that may require
special attention for students in these settings to maximize their potential.
This kind of programming may require additional resources.

Finding Two—The average rates of
academic growth by high achievers in wealthy and poor schools were nearly
equivalent.

Only modest differences in growth
rates were observed among all high achievers, with poorer schools producing
trivially smaller growth in math achievement and poorer elementary schools
showing slightly larger growth rates in reading achievement. This suggests that
moving a child from a poor school to a wealthier school was not likely to have
any noticeable impact on that student’s academic growth rate, particularly with
respect to reading skills.

Policy Implication: For years a
mythology has persisted that implies parents must move to the suburbs or enroll
their children in charter or private schools to get a quality education. For
this sample at least, the myth

is busted, and the results provide
solid evidence that accountability policies that are based on students’
academic progress are a better measure of school effectiveness than the
proficiency-driven approach of NCLB. Status measures
are useful for identifying top student populations, and these benchmarks
provide parents with an essential means for assessing whether their children
are making progress toward their personal academic goals. School accountability
policies should not be based on status measures (such as proficiency rates

or
college readiness rates), since these measures are largely controlled by
socioeconomic factors beyond school control. Rather, schools should be held
accountable for student growth rates.

The consequences of these differences
were enormous for the students at these schools. For example, the top quartile
of high-poverty elementary schools produced growth rates that entirely erased
and surpassed the achievement gap relative to the wealthiest schools with the
lowest growth rates. This same pattern was true for middle schools as well.
In other words, the quality of the school mattered a great deal more than the
poverty rate of the school in determining student growth.

Policy Implication: In order to
ensure that high achievers receive adequate resources within their schools,
regardless of school poverty, we should recognize the top performers in each
school as a subgroup when setting accountability policy and evaluating school
programs.

that group’s disadvantages, and
policy is an appropriate lever for that purpose. But educational policy is also
used to address issues of a compelling national interest. Employing policy to
assure that each community’s best performing children get the attention from
schools that will be needed to achieve their potential, not only serves
children well, it also guarantees that we develop the next generation of
experts and leaders in business, science, medicine, and politics. For that
reason, this subgroup’s results should affect the school’s accountability score
within their state, just as the performance of other subgroups do.

Michael Dahlin, Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology, is a Research Specialist in the Kingsbury Center at NWEA. His primary research
interests are policy research related to testing standards, school accountability, and teacher accountability.
Beth Tarasawa, Ph.D. in Sociology, is a Research Specialist in the Kingsbury Center at NWEA. Her primary research interest is
education policy related to economic and racial equity.